Jake,
I've had my shares of T a **lot** longer than 10 years, having been given my first shares as a child. One of the reasons I have not participated in the T thread here at SI is because it is one of those stocks I have stuck under the mattress--I only really pay attention when its time to do my taxes and have to report the dividends received. For my long distance carrier I have always used T; I have never played the game of jumping from one company to another and, until now, always felt I was doing as well sticking with T as any other long distance carrier.
I say 'up to now' because I am finding the plans of some newer companies very, very attractive, more attractive than T's various options. One I have just heard about and looked into, talk.com's, offers .09/minute all the time and has no minimum monthly fee and no minimum of minutes one must talk. My plan with T in which I prepay for 2 hours at $12.00 works out to .10 a minute **BUT** there are blocks of time I am away and end up paying for minutes I do not use. Talk.com has international calling plans, as does T, and talk.com's costs exactly the same as T's for the country I call.
I'm seriously considering shifting from T to talk.com or a similar carrier and voicing my concerns here. Earlier today I spoke with someone at T's customer service about the offerings of some of these non-MCI, non-Sprint carriers taking customers, like me, who have never been enticed to shift before. The respons I got was that T beat these others by offering a plan where one paid .05 on Sunday and .10 the rest of the week. My reply was that this is **not** beating the competition on price because one has to pay a $4.95 monthly fee for this plan. The woman kept harping on the .05 Sunday calls, brushing aside the $4.95 charge.
Trying to call T's IR to talk to someone there about the competition these newer long distance carriers are presenting was an excercise in futility. The 800 number I found on their web site has nothing but prerecorded information on a number of topics. The number to speak with someone at T's IR is ***not*** a toll-free number but I called anyway--and got voice mail.
I'm not planning to sell my shares of T but I am going to be changing long distance carriers. With that $3.00 charge people are going to incur for months they make less than $3.00 in long distance calls, I can forsee a number of other people changing carriers, too.
FOr me its not the .01 less I'll be paying with one of the new companies. Its the money I end up paying T for the chunks of time I'm away when no long distance (or even local) calls are made.
Sorry to rant, but right now, I feel like I'm going through a divorce with T (as long distance carrier).
Lynn
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